Steven Read's adventures as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in the Canada Edmonton Mission.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Ode to Oreo

Hey Mother and family!

Oreo died!? Poor guy :( I loved that dog! That's too bad that he
went out that way, but I agree that putting him down was the best
option. He was an old man and it was his time to go. I'll miss him
though, he was the best! I still laugh about the time I walked into
the dining room and found him halfway down the heat vent trying to
crawl his way out hahaha. Senior moment for sure. Anyways he was a
good dog, pretty stupid, but that's why we love him! Haha I'll miss
him a lot.

Okay, so this week was sweet, and crazy, for a number of reasons.
So far so good on the speeding tickets! I was a little worried there
might be more, but no calls so far! (Knock on wood). I paid it
yesterday, so we're good to go! We slid into a snow bank yesterday
pulling into the church, but it just popped something off of the
bumper, and it clicked back into place haha still good!

Zone Conference was sweet. There were some really good trainings
given by President, the assistants, and the zone leaders. We played
Mission Jeopardy, and lunch was awesome. They made Cafe Rio (sp?) and
it was delicious! After the conference, however, was pretty crazy. So
the Barrhead elders were staying with us most of this week, and since
we're in our area, Elder Fifita and I split off with them so that they
aren't wandering around our area wondering where to go. So after
conference Elder Pinehault and I drove back to Spruce and Elder Fifita
and Miller stayed for a leadership training. After the training, they
drove the Elders serving downtown home, and then went into the
apartment to grab something they'd left there awhile back. So some
other missionaries showed up and they all ended up wrestling around,
and one of them jumped onto Elder Fifita's back and tried to wrap his
legs around him. Elder Fifita turned around, and the other elder
slipped off his back and hit his head on the corner of the desk. When
he took his hand off of his head, blood starting gushing everywhere,
and when the got it under control they realized he had split his head
open. So they laid him down, and he seemed okay, so they figured
they'd drive him to the ER. But then he got up, walked into the other
room, and lost consciousness and started having a seizure. The two
tongans in the room (pretty big guys) and another elder couldn't hold
him down, so Elder Fifita gave him a blessing and the seizures
stopped. So then they called 911, but while they were waiting he
stopped breathing, so they had to give him CPR. The paramedics arrived
pretty soon after that and revived him, and then took him to the
hospital. He got a pretty bad concussion, and his memory's erased back
5 months. So he doesn't remember anything between that time. He
recognized President and Sister Campbell because he saw their picture
in his call packet over 5 months ago. His left side was also paralyzed
for a couple of days. So he stayed in the hospital for a few days, and
then he was released on Saturday. They're keeping him on his mission
because medical care is better here than in Mongolia where he's from,
but he's basically starting over. I heard he's slowly starting to
regain some memories, but who knows if it'll ever fully come back. I
saw him yesterday though and he looked good, just confused. So yeah,
pretty crazy! Elder Fifita's felt terrible though, and he blames
himself for it, but I think after he saw the guy yesterday, he feels
better. So it's been a stressful week for him. We had interviews on
Thursday with President and so that helped him a lot.

So other than that all that, it was a good week for sure. We were
able to meet with quite a few members this week, and we met with one
of our investigators on Saturday. His name's Blake, and he's actually
baptized, but not confirmed haha. I guess he was baptized when he was
young, but his family never came to church the next day, or at all
after that. So now he's married to a member, and so we teach him every
Saturday. He doesn't really have a huge desire to be baptized yet, but
we were able to give his sick son a blessing while we were there this
week, and I think it made a difference for him.

We met with some other investigators, Dave and Carla. They're
living common law, just waiting to get divorced from their previous
spouses, but they both know it's true and consider themselves members.
Their divorces end in May, so once those are finalized and they're
married, they'll for sure be baptized. Carla's pregnant and lives
alone, so that's why Dave says he lives with her. They're awesome
people though, I hope I'm here to see them baptized.

Hey random question! Where is Forks, Oregon. I can't tell you how
many times I've been asked that when I say I'm from Oregon hahahaha.
Twilight comes up almost every time! I always say I've never heard of
Forks, and they look at me like I just lied about living in Oregon. Is
it even in Oregon?

This week we drove up to Barrhead, which is about an hour north,
to pick up Elder Fifita's camera that he left there on exchanges. It's
sweet, missionaries here have "line maps", which are basically just
maps and we color in the roads that we've traveled on. Missionaries
always try and serve in outlying areas so they can get "sweet lines".
Anyways, we got some sweet lines going up to Barrhead, and then took a
different way back and got another line! A lot of people get in
trouble for taking outrageous routes back to their areas after
transfers so they can get new lines, but the route we took home was
pretty much the same distance so no harm done :)

Speaking of driving, yesterday we had to drive to the mission
office to pay off my ticket, and on our way to the North End of
Edmonton for basketball, we got completely lost haha. We ended up
downtown, crossing the North Saskatchewan River about 3 times, and
then finally giving up and going west until we found the highway we
usually take haha. It was an adventure! I don't know downtown at all,
and Fifita never had drive when we served down there was so we were
hosed.

The weather is still the same. It's been snowing like you
wouldn't believe for the past couple of weeks, and it's everywhere.
I'm sick of it haha I'm ready for Summer! Hopefully some day it'll
warm up. I pray for it every day!

Hey we're having a General Authority visit our mission in May!
Elder Kazuhiko Yamashita of the Seventy is coming to tour some of the
Canadian missions. I'm super excited, he's the one that spoke last
general conference about missionaries. It'll be sweet!

Hey another random thought, I want to go and see the Hill Cumorah
Pageant and all the church history stuff! Some members were telling us
about it this week and it sounds sweet! Tell me that wouldn't be cool!

Alright the end of the email rambling is over, I'm officially out
of things to talk about haha. You guys are awesome! I miss you all!